Have you ever saved an important file onto a flash drive or external hard drive on a Mac and then were unable to open it on a Windows machine? Or copied files onto your Windows external drive that you couldn’t edit on your Mac? The problem lies in the way in which the drive was formatted. By default, Windows devices use the file system. Modern Macs can read but not write to NTFS-formatted devices.

Mac cheat sheet for pc users. Apple® Mac OS X Cheat Sheet The Mac OS X Desktop Shortcuts General Quit Application + Q Minimize Window + M Minimize All/Switch Option + to New Application toolbar + Click Print a File + P Open a File + O Close a Window + W Select All + A Undo + Z Redo or Repeat + Y Switch Between + Tab Open Applications.

Boot Camp is Apple's utility that lets Mac owners choose to boot their computer with OS X or Windows, and it offers Windows support for the Mac's built-in components and accessories. Boot Camp 5.1. Jan 14, 2014 - Windows does not read HFS file system, i need to put the Mac hard drive on an external enclosure and copy all files to the windows PC, how do.

By default, the Mac uses the (or “Mac OS Extended”) file system. Windows machines, by default, cannot read HFS+ drives. Both Macs and Windows devices can read and write to drives formatted in the file system, but FAT32 (the latest version of FAT) only allows for a maximum of 2 GB of data — enough for flash drives, perhaps, but no longer sufficient for most hard drive uses. So, what can you do? Install software that recognizes the “foreign” drives.

An excellent list of tools you can use is found on: • •.

If you dual-boot your Hackintosh, you've probably noticed that Windows can't read hard drive partitions used by Mac OS X. Mac OS X uses the HFS+ hard drive format, which Windows doesn't support. Luckily, you can enable HFS+ support on Windows with the help of one or two Windows drivers (depending on your budget). Read past the break for a tutorial on how to access your Hackintosh's Mac OS X hard drive partition from Windows. Having read/write access for your Mac partition on Windows will come in handy if your Hackintosh becomes unbootable, because you'll be able to boot into Windows to recover your files (and possibly fix your Hackintosh's boot problem). On top of that, it's simply convenient. LATEST UPDATE (January 26, 2013): Added Apple's Boot Camp Drivers to the article.

Paragon HFS+ ($20) ($20) is a Windows application that mounts all of your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer (a.k.a. My Computer) and gives you read and write access. There's a 10-day trial available.

Paragon HFS+ runs in the background and automatically starts on bootup, so accessing your Mac drives will feel exactly like accessing normal Windows drives. Is the same company that makes, my recommended solution for enabling on Mac OS X Lion.

If you're looking for an alternative to Paragon HFS+, then you can also consider ($50; 5-day trial), which is the solution that I'm currently using on my own Hackintosh. It has a higher price tag and doesn't offer much more than Paragon HFS+, but it's an option. If purchasing apps is not an option for you, check out the following section.

Apple's is designed to help you run Windows on real Macs. Among other things, Boot Camp includes built-in HFS+ drivers for Windows. These drivers will mount your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer and give you read access (but no write access). If you don't need to write any files to your Mac hard drives, using them is a free and relatively pain-free solution. While the HFS+ drivers are normally packaged as part of Apple's Boot Camp Assistant software, you can download them separately below. DOWNLOAD: The above download is a ZIP file; open the file in Windows by double-clicking it.